Promotional Literature Essay

Modern ways of promoting goods and services as reached far beyond newspapers, radio, and TV. The companies have gone into the World Wide Web, which gave them almost boundless opportunities for advertising and promotion of their products, and the pharmaceuticals are not the exception.

I have randomly chosen one of the sites that contained information about medications (www.drugstorescripts.com) and selected one of the products promoted. The medicine I have chosen is called Lunesta (or Eszopiclone tablets) and in the core is “a sedative-type drug that helps to relieve insomnia (sleeplessness).”
Ironically, the manufacturing company was not mentioned in the ad, the copyright statement in the lower left corner of the page stated: “The products mentioned are trademarks of their respective owners and are not owned by or affiliated with this website, or any of its affiliated companies.” So I had to use search systems to locate the manufacturer of the product.

According to the corporate site, Sepracor Inc. is a research-based pharmaceutical company dedicated to “treating and preventing human disease by discovering, developing, and commercializing innovative pharmaceutical products directed toward serving unmet medical needs.”
The information about the medicine provided on the site states the drug’s effects and risks, describes the product features, effectiveness, and precautions in the form of replies to open questions. From the information obtained, one might think there are more hazards than benefits resulting from taking the pills. But is the distinctive feature of most medical products to state all possible causes and effects of the medicine to exclude problematic issues in the future. That is why it is more remarkable that this piece of information literature contains the following a note that says: “This information is not intended to cover all possible uses, precautions, interactions, or adverse effects of this drug.”
Although the customers (target audience) are not depicted in the advertisement (no identifying information – the approximate age, gender, and race of people – is given), one could assume that the gender and race differences are not substantial, while the age of the target audience is probably 30+. Though insomnia may occur at any age, it is more often observed in aged people. But the picture is not so lop-sided. Business people also often suffer from sleeplessness.

It is essential that this advertisement contains a lot of valuable information presented in a transparent Q&A manner, appealing to customers. The advertisers do not use any additional appealing imagery (such as animals, cartoons). Probably that is because the target audience is older than the one that would need further visual information appealing to them to use the product. The only visible details supporting the text advertisement is the picture of the pills promoted. The language of the statement is clear and presented as if the client consulted his therapist and found out the information of interest for his or her problem. This presenting medical data is naturally more appealing to customers, and, thus, is more efficient concerning promoting medicines.